Ajoy Chawla, CEO of Titan’s Jewellery Division joined us for an exclusive interview as part of NewsX India Alist. He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Titan’s Jewellery business that houses iconic brands such as Tanishq, Mia, Zoya and CaratLane. Zoya, the exquisite diamond boutique from the House of Tata, is a luxury brand of fine jewellery, renowned for its expert craftsmanship and distinguished design.

Talking about the launch of Zoya’s new collection ‘Samave‘, Chawla said “It a signature collection from Zoya, which draws inspiration from architecture, more specifically the Indian step wells, and it is also a metaphor of a connection between the woman, her own inspiration as well as the inspiration from the feminine power of the tribe.”

Explaining further, Chawla said “If you look at the step wells, it’s a marvellous piece of architecture, very Indian. It’s layered, it’s intimate. It’s tucked away. It’s a place where women meet other women as they come in search of water. Water is a metaphor for life. And even as the woman is descending down the steps where she is in our own way undertaking a journey of self-discovery, discovering our own inspiration while connecting deeply with other women, very intimately in fact, in Sanskrit the meaning of the word summary is to unite to come together to connect intimately.”

“We thought it’s a wonderful way to kind of capture the entire metaphor. It’s an all-white diamond only collection with straight lines clean lines, both in rose gold and white coat, and the versatile collection has rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets,” added the Intrapreneur.

Sharing insights on strategy during the lockdown and how that has worked for the brand, the CEO said “As a young brand it still has a long way to go but it’s a niche brand opportunity to grow in a country like India in itself is great. Our target customer has not really been impacted, at least economically. This time around, of course, there has been a certain humanitarian impact much more than last time. It’s been brutal, for many people. But if I look at last year Zoya grew, despite losing out the first three months, it grew for the year at about 14-15%.”

“Of course, driven by the growth of new points of sale that we added. We added a store in Bangalore during the last lockdown and it has done very well for us. Even before the pandemic broke, despite us not getting a chance to launch it in a big way because of social distancing restrictions, etc but it has done very well. We have added galleries, which are like shopping shops in select Tanishq stores in Bombay, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Kolkata. And by the end of this month in Chandigarh, the footprint of Zoya has grown beyond Bombay, Delhi Bangalore to include these other towns as well.” elaborated Chawla.

Zoya’s personalized service focuses on providing an unmatched buying experience for its exclusive products. Zoya now extends its service through video-assisted jewellery advisory, home trials, contactless delivery and interactive e-catalogues.

Speaking on digital marketing and digital sales which has become the new normal, the CEO said “For all categories of products, and even for jewellery, we have seen that customers prefer safety and convenience of digital. And during the last year in fact we saw, Zoya customers really take up to remote, shopping, as well as digital so it could be that it is initiated by the customer getting on to the website booking an appointment, or it could be from the store side. In addition to that, what we are seeing is that as people come online, they still want a personalized experience and seamless experience.”

“We are soon also hoping to launch a members-only portal and we can take this personalization story even further. We have also continued to offer curated personalized experiences at home,” added Chawla on a concluding note.

Ahead of the release of the upcoming Bollywood movie Toofan on Amazon Prime, Actors Farhan Akhtar, Mrunal Thakur, Paresh Rawal and filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX India A-List. As part of the conversation, the team of Toofan opened up about the storyline, plot, the experience of working with each other and much more. Read excerpts:

Speaking about what drew him to the story, Farhan said, “To start with, there is a message in the film, which will reveal itself when you watch the film. At the heart of it, it is about acceptance of each other. It is about not judging people for their labels that you may associate with them, recognising a person, loving a person or disliking them based on character. There are many different things in the film, apart from the boxing. Boxing is the backdrop against which is set. To me, the message of the film was exciting. I was like who is that person that i can speak to regarding this thought or realising the idea in a way that one would hope that it could be. I reached out to Rakeysh and said ‘Please hear this. If you are interested, lets do it together. I am really glad that he got into it.”

Talking about what made him come on-board,  Paresh Rawal said, “Before i even heard the story, I wanted to work with Rakeysh Ji. I wanted to work with Farhan Bhai and his company Excel because they are doing some great work. Later, when I heard the story, I felt that there are some stories that are created and there are some you release. This was a story of soul, heart and brain, so I felt that we should do it and it is very important for this film to exist. When you work with such people, you feel that you will not only be able to do good work but also become a better person. I think the takeaway of this film is that you should come out as a better person. This is what I feel. This is my takeaway.”

When asked about the USP of the film, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra responded, “USP is a very product kind of definition- What is the unique selling proposition? How can you sell emotions? I would say that the unique sharing proposition. Let’s re-term USP. All we want is to share love though this film and relationships. There are so many wounds in the society today and all over the world. We are going through a very difficult time. Instead of scratching the wounds, if one can apply a soothing balm over it, this film heals you. All characters in the film are broken and they fix each other. That’s the beauty of it. When you see these characters and you see Farhan’s character, Paresh sir’s character, Mrunal’s character, they are all carrying very deep wounds but how they resolve that and how they resolve it for each other, how they come together and fall apart and come together again is a process of healing. For me, that was the most important thing.”

“As mentioned earlier, Farhan called me and I heard the story, the idea and the thought. I told Farhan that we must do it. It has got a voice, a expression and it has got something to say. It was a potential. It was a nascent thought at that time but we thought that we can develop it and take it further. It became even more fortunate as more and more conspirators joined in,” he added.

On being quoted as saying that ‘Toofan is the mix of Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, Rakeysh clarified, “I think that was misquoted. I would like to correct that through your platform. I said if I were to put together Rang De Basanti and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is equal to Toofan for me. I feel that I have come out much more enriched as a human being, not just as a technician, as a director in my profession but as an overall human being. I became much more enriched and then  I came out of Rang De and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag. It’s beautiful to keep  finding that and reinventing yourself and to grow in life. You can never stop growing.”

Expressing her gratitude on being a part of Toofan and her fondness towards her character, Mrunal Thakur said, “Ananya is a very special person, very close to my heart. I think I have evolved with her, I have become more passionate. Like there is a leadership quality in her. She likes to lead people, especially those who are a little distracted and do not know what they are capable of. As Mrunal, I resonated with the character so much when I read the script and when  I was on set with Farhan and Paresh Ji. I think it all elevated the performance. I was feeling the character more than I was performing or acting so to say. What was beautiful was the journey, to be able to work witth Rakeysh sir- I love him,  I love his work and I did manifest to work with him. Finally, I get to work with Rakeysh sir.”

Was Toofan like a school being surrounded by Farhan Akhtar, Paresh Rawal and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra? Mrunal says, “No matter how much I learnt in school or acting school, it wasn’t enough because I actually learnt about life, how to deal with those problems. Ananya maybe strong but Mrunal wasn’t.  There were times when I did get confidence from Farhan or Paresh ji and the beauty about this film was that we never rehearsed those lines. What we had was conversations before we did the scene. Rakeysh sir helped me to connect those incidents and circumstances with my personal life. When  I was performing, I could get flashes and memories from all those incidents that happened in the past. I am really honoured and blessed to be a part of such a brilliant film. I have never been so motivated after doing a film. I was never into fitness but when I was see Farhan perform and see him train, he would inspire me.”

Renowned political thinker and economic expert, Dr Suvrokamal Dutta joined us for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX India Alist and talked about the tumultuous journey of his past while he is finally about to get into politics full-fledged. Dr Dutta is a renowned media celebrity, foreign policy, political and economic expert and was the youngest team member of the Vajpayee govt. He has also served as the former National Executive Member of BJP.

Sharing about his early days Dr Dutta said, “I used to be very flamboyant right from my childhood. I was vociferous in my debates and public talks. Unlike many, I never had stage fright, I was quite politically conscious and had a tendency to be the leader in class. With that in mind, I thought like I should go into something which is related to public services and public dealings. I graduated in Economics and did my research from JNU in Economic History of India with the Asia Pacific. I also got into student politics at JNU. I joined ABVP in the Marxist bastion which was a big challenge. Later on, I got involved with the Vajpayee government. I used to look after youth affairs and culture for the youth wing. I also used to go for the state elections and parliament elections at that time.”

Dr Dutta mentioned, “Since my career combination is more of business, politics and public relations, I definitely have an urge to get into politics finally. I always had this dream right from my childhood of being in parliament once in my lifetime. That tendency is still there, I don’t know if it will be fulfilled or not. But the way things are going I might have the opportunity to represent the people of India.”

When asked about his career as an expert and commentator in news channels and columnists he said that the latter one started as a thankless job in the 90s. Dr Dutta said, “I was the first one to talk about many concepts like the breaks, the Shanghai Corporation and IPSA. I wanted to do this for the larger public good. I used to write very good research articles on my area and send them to different newspapers for publication on the editorial page but for almost two years I was not obliged. I always used to get a letter from the editor saying that, “Sorry, your piece was very good but we cannot take this, might be in the next issue.” I remember the first break I got in media was one of the national newspapers in English. That was after two and a half years of struggle and it was just four sentences of my quote. That’s how I started. After that, I got splashed in the media in all the editorial pages of the reputed journals and newspapers.

Adding to that, he talked about his journey in electronic media. Dr Duttta said, “Later on right before 2004, I entered into the electronic media. One of the channels had given me a break in a particular issue that was boiling at that time in relation to JNU. The same happened with other channels including yours.”

Dr Dutta also talked about the B2B business, highlighting Atmanirbhar Bharat. “We have MoUs with Russia, Sri Lanka, Mauritius and other countries for doing better business, especially catering to the ease of business and Atmanirbhar Bharat as the prime focus in relation to India.”

To encourage the youth, Dr Dutta advised that there is nothing that can replace hard work. It is the only sustainable approach for the long run even though that comes with its own share of troubles. He advised the younger generation to remain alert and grab every valuable opportunity from the goldmine that India is.

Kamiya Jani, CEO of Curly Tales, is a food and travel blogger. She is Influencing the digital world through one blog at a time. She is reinventing digital coverage of food and travel. She recently joined NewsX for an exclusive conversation as part of NewsX Influencer A-List series. In the conversation, she spoke to us about the Curly Tales, her passion and enthusiasm for food and travel, her social media influence and much more.

Speaking about Curly Tales platform’s origin and how it caters to viewers ranging across the age spectrum, Kamiya said: “Curly tales is a food and travel platform and thankfully all age groups enjoy these two categories. That’s the whole intent of reaching out to various age groups. How it originated is an interesting story. 4-5 years ago, I was a news anchor at a business news channel but after a good 10 years of corporate job in media industry I decided to listen to my inner calling. I quit my job, started travelling, documenting my travels and culinary journeys, made videos posted on Facebook and boom I saw some really good response coming from all age groups. So that’s how Curly tales was born back in 2017, cut to 2021 we are now with 2.1 million followers on Facebook.”

Sharing about how social media platform like Facebook helped her, she said: “I think social media is great space to be in if you want to reach out to people. People have got addicted to social media which is a good thing for creators like me to showcase our talents and stories. We want to put out one story every day to give them a bucket list which can motivate them to move out of office or homes to discover and explore hidden gems. Our formula is not to give exclusive luxurious experiences but more of something which is achievable and relatable. So we covered mostly neighbourhood stories. Facebook is a great platform to kick-start and where we are today is because of Facebook.”

When asked about the process of recognising and recommending good food and travel places, Kamiya responded: “The beauty of social media is that it’s so interactive and once you begin your journey, you have so many suggestions and comments coming in from your community. When we started it was just me, my phone and selfie stick. I used to go around create videos, edit it myself and I saw a great response. Currently we are a team of good 20 people. That’s the whole process. We have come a long way.”

Talking about how the pandemic affected her work, she said: “It affected us as much as restaurants and hotels owners. The biggest hit was on tourism industry. So we used this time to organise ourselves and look at multiple avenues for revenue. It has of course impacted us majorly. We have been relying on online interviews and keeping our community engaged. We still talk about food and more so home cooked food.”

Giving advice to young people who are just starting out and look up to her, she said: “I will just say be consistent in whatever you are doing. Of course it’s going to be a long journey with a lot of hard work, so you have to pick up a string you’re extremely passionate about. You gotta love your job so much that money shouldn’t be a motivation at all.”

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has announced a new population policy which seeks to incentivise those who help in population control. The Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilisation and Welfare) Bill, 2021 provides provisions to increase the access of family planning programmes and focus on reducing new-borns. Apart from reducing new-borns, the focus area is in reducing maternal mortality rate and improving nutrition of adolescents between 11 and 19 years of age.

The Uttar Pradesh government plans to introduce promotions, increments, concessions in housing schemes and other perks to employees who adhere to population control norms, and have two or less children. For non-government employees who still contribute towards keeping the population in check, rebates in taxes on water, housing, home loans, etc, will be introduced to get mass participation and adherence. For a country like India, it’s the carrot and stick approach in policymaking which can be implemented and result in desired outcomes and the Yogi way of Population Control Bill is the best example of such a policy.

Ever since the MVA coalition came into power in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena which has been historically known as a vocal party on most issues has learnt to be pusillanimous. It has put ideology in the backburner and compromised its political stand just to please the Congress and retain power. On issues such as secularism and the Ayodhya Ram Mandir, the Shiv Sena doesn’t dare take a stand. For a party which prides itself on its aggressive posturing, it’s a pitiable situation where the leaders and karyakartas find themselves in.

Population has been a pan-India problem and every state faces strain on its natural resources when population explodes. There should ideally be a wide-spread consensus across the political spectrum for the population menace. The idea of uplifting the masses from poverty suffers a setback due to consistent growth in population. As per World Economic Forum, India’s population could overtake that of China as early as 2026. India’s population is set to reach over 1.6 billion by 2060. While overtaking China is inevitable, the country should welcome the move by Yogi Adityanath—the Chief minister of most populous state. However, the question arises whether other states can and will follow suit to curb the problem?

The Shiv Sena has historically supported the idea of population control and the late Shiv Sena Supremo Balasaheb Thackeray was articulate in advocating its need. In fact, the Shiv Sena had welcomed the remarks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he highlighted the need to tackle challenge of population explosion as recent as August 2019. In principle, no party in India opposes population control bill except the Congress. In practice, a secularism angle comes into it, making pseudo-secular parties wary of alienating the Muslim community. The fertility rate among minorities is much higher than the Hindu community. Even though the National Family Health Survey (NHFS) conducted in 2015-16 shows a narrowing of fertility gap between Hindus and Muslims, late demographer P.N Mari Bhatt had projected Hindus to achieve replacement fertility by 2021 while Muslims will achieve replacement fertility by 2031 only. The fertility gap is still too high at 23.8%, as per NHFS 2015-16 and 2021 census may give a clearer recent picture. According to 2005-06 NHFS, the figure was 3.4 children for Muslims and 2.6 children for Hindus or a fertility gap of 30.8%.

The Congress in recent decades has sought to play down the differential in order to pander to their minority vote-bank. The pseudo-secular turn of the Shiv Sena in order to retain the Chief Minister’s chair makes it desperate to toe the Congress line. From the perspective of the average voter in Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena won’t be allowed to introduce a population control bill even if it believes in it ideologically. The hypocrisy of the Congress has been in bringing the secular angle to even matters unconnected to religion. Will Congress allow CM Uddhav Thackeray to bring a population policy in Maharashtra? The answer is “No” and nobody is surprised. 

The writer is a BJP spokesperson, advisor to former Maharashtra CM, and Maharashtra in-charge of Uttar Bharatiya Morcha. The views expressed are personal.

The appointment of the formidable Dharmendra Pradhan as the new Education Minister is a clear indication that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants an end to the backseat driving in the functioning of this major ministry. There has been an increasing feeling, with comparatively weak ministers in the saddle, about too much ‘outside interference’ in functioning of the educational institution under the aegis of the Central government.

The Modi government in 2014 had inherited a rich legacy of education institutions, thanks to the vision of late Human Resource Development (HRD) Arjun Singh and his successor Kapil Sibal, a bouquet of central universities was created across the country which added handsomely to the list of already existing institutions built before and after Independence. Despite the infrastructure, it also remains a fact that education in our country largely remained hostage to the whims and fancies of the Left-leaning ideologues. Over the years there was an increasing desire to break education free from Left-leaning ideological parochialism.

Unfortunately, during the past seven years, the Modi government in this particular sector succumbed to parochialism of another kind. The Left-leaning insularity came to be replaced by Right-wing blinkeredness. The change has been for the worse, as during the Congress and coalition governments, an attempt was always made to create a countervail to the Left’s dominance; however, in the past seven years the so-called czars of cultural nationalism have had a free run.

Unfortunately, the implementation of the agenda of cultural nationalism has been limited to the appointment of the devotees of these czars, blessed with academic mediocrity, to plum positions. Expectedly, many of these appointees miserably failed to rise to the challenges of the office and ended up in situations which brought disrepute to the government. Charges of misuse of office and financial impropriety were levelled against several of these incumbents and some of them also dismissed from office.

This is the opportune moment for the Modi government to expand its ideological base beyond the limited cadres to those, as the late Arun Jaitley would say, waiting to be converted. This ideological blinkeredness so far has left the ministry in pitiable situation with Pradhan’s predecessor, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, being forced to cancel twice the conference of the Vice-Chancellors as 20 out of 40 central universities have been headless for past several months. These include prestigious universities like JNU, BHU, Delhi University and Hyderabad University.

Some of the other Central universities without its top functionary for more than a year are Central Universities of Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu, Manipur, Hari Singh Gour University Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Hyderabad, South Bihar University, the North East Hill University, Rajasthan, Kashmir, the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad and the Guru Ghasidas Central University in Bilaspur. How does a government which announces the New Education Policy (NEP) with so much fanfare seeks to implement it if the educational institutions remain in a dysfunctional state?

In an interaction with the heads of the IITs and IISc, earlier this week, Prime Minister Modi said that the country’s higher educational and technical institutions need to prepare the youth for continuous disruptions and changes, keeping in mind the fourth industrial revolution. This is easier said than done. Prime Minister Modi is setting very high benchmarks for such centres of higher education and it’s for his government to ensure that these institutions have sufficient talent to execute his plans.

Supplementing to what the Prime Minister said, Pradhan at the same deliberation enunciated his plans saying that the government is committed to making students and the youth the primary stakeholders in propelling India towards an equitable knowledge society and that would foster an environment for creating a future-ready India. The minister saying that the government was committed to inculcating a culture of innovation, encouraging research, entrepreneurship and developing futuristic solutions in higher education, all sounds very good but the challenge lies in the implementation of this vision.

Implementation needs an efficient human resource structure, which unfortunately is non-existent as of now. The delay in affecting appointments of the Vice-Chancellors have had a cascading effect, with the recruitment of other teaching and non-teaching manpower of the universities and most of the colleges and institutions affiliated to them getting stalled. This has ended in giving the impression that education was not the Modi government’s priority, which Pradhan would now need work to alter.

The pandemic and its aftermath have thrown new challenges before the Education Ministry. The migration of the teaching-learning community to the digital platforms has to be real. The digital divide and digital deficit are real time challenges facing the education sector as it has given a huge advantage to the students residing in the urban sector. The seekers of education from rural India, living in lodges and hostels, have been forced to return to their pastoral hearths, which are mostly out of digital networks.

Pradhan’s immediate predecessor gave an impression of micro-managing even things which ordinarily should have been left to the officials. Once again recalling from a lecture by Jaitley, where he had said that camera likes sad pictures and working for the sake of camera could be counter-productive. Education is one area where diverse talent is available in plenty and one can use them provided one looks beyond the cadres and allows talents to function and flourish.

The vision of the Modi government and its implementation would need participation of not just educated but a knowledgeable population. Having come up through students’ politics, Pradhan is best placed to identify with the needs of the post-pandemic world. Challenges posed by Covid-19 to our economy and society can only be overcome by having such an education system, to use the Pradhan’s words, which is committed to inculcating a culture of innovation, encouraging research, entrepreneurship and developing futuristic solutions.

With these challenges and the promise to implement the New Education Policy, Pradhan has a clear roadmap to follow for his ministry. There still is ample time and the minister has a proven track record to carry the officialdom and other stakeholders together. Maybe he can change the perception of the Modi government not being serious about education.

The writer is a political commentator and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice. The views expressed are personal.